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But what is the Nature of this Spirit- of the Supernals in
general?
The Spirit-Kind is treated in the Symposium where, with much
about the others, we learn of Eros- Love- born to Penia- Poverty-
and Poros- Possession- who is son of Metis- Resource- at
Aphrodite's birth feast.
But to take Plato as meaning, by Eros, this Universe- and not
simply the Love native within it- involves much that is
self-contradictory.
For one thing, the universe is described as a blissful god and as
self-sufficing, while this "Love" is confessedly neither divine
nor self-sufficing but in ceaseless need.
Again, this Kosmos is a compound of body and soul; but Aphrodite
to Plato is the Soul itself, therefore Aphrodite would
necessarily- he a constituent part of Eros, dominant member! A
man is the man's Soul, if the world is, similarly, the world's
Soul, then Aphrodite, the Soul, is identical with Love, the
Kosmos! And why should this one spirit, Love, be the Universe to
the exclusion of all the others, which certainly are sprung from
the same Essential-Being? Our only escape would be to make the
Kosmos a complex of Supernals.
Love, again, is called the Dispenser of beautiful children: does
this apply to the Universe? Love is represented as homeless,
bedless and barefooted: would not that be a shabby description of
the Kosmos and quite out of the truth?
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